According to Statistics Canada, Canadian manufacturing sales increased 0.7 percent to $71.6 billion in February, on elevated sales in 13 of 21 subsectors, mainly driven by higher sales of petroleum and coal (+4.3 percent) as well as electrical equipment, appliance and component (+12.6 percent) products. Meanwhile, the chemical subsector (-5.5 percent) recorded the largest decline.
Total inventories decreased 0.7 percent to $120.6 billion in February, the third consecutive monthly decline. Lower goods in process (-1.8 percent) and raw materials (-0.5 percent) inventories largely contributed to the decrease in February. From an industry perspective, lower inventories of chemicals (-5.5 percent) and petroleum and coal products (-2.7 percent) were mainly responsible for the decline. Total inventories in constant dollars declined 0.8 percent in February.
The inventory-to-sales ratio contracted from 1.71 in January to 1.68 in February. This ratio measures the time, in months, that would be required to exhaust inventories if sales were to remain at their current level.
The total value of unfilled orders rose 0.8 percent to $105.1 billion in February, largely on a 1.2 percent increase in unfilled orders of aerospace products and parts.
The capacity utilization rate (not seasonally adjusted) for the total manufacturing sector increased from 77.0 percent in January to 78.1 percent in February.
Capacity utilization rates increased in the machinery (+2.3 percentage points), transportation equipment (+1.5 percentage points) and food (+1.8 percentage points) subsectors. The gains were partly offset by lower capacity utilization rates in the primary metal (-1.0 percentage points) and paper product (-1.9 percentage points) subsectors.